When it comes to language and its political use, most writers turn to Orwell. But I’ll turn to Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel wrote: “When language fails, violence becomes a language.” Unfortunately, there are organized and disorganized groups who use words without knowing, or perhaps caring, what they mean. Ignorance can be a precursor to violence and a grave danger to an intelligent society.
Agreed-upon definitions are essential. Dinner gets very strange when you can’t agree on what a fork is. And if you don’t know the proper use of a fork, the best guess is that it’s a weapon. Words are like that. What is fascism? Socialism? Anybody? You there, in the back?
During the recent midterm elections, I met a man who was running for our local school board. Since we met outside the library, I asked him what he thought of banning books. “I have nothing against banning books,” he proclaimed, “if it keeps pornography out of the hands of our children! I’m against the woke agenda!”
There are several things to unpack there, but let’s stick with the word woke. We can leave out ‘agenda’ since a ‘woke agenda’ doesn’t exist.
According to Merriam-Webster, woke means aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).
So if we go with a dictionary definition, he’s against being aware and attentive to societal facts and issues. Thank heaven he lost.
Let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt. Say he’s not against that. Assume he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what woke means. Do we want people who don’t use a dictionary to run the school board?
Christmas is coming. How do you explain to Uncle Fred over Christmas dinner that he doesn’t understand the words he’s using? First, you don’t. Because Uncle Fred thinks Tucker Carlson is more intelligent than you. After all, you’re not on TV. So you pull up the word ‘woke’ on your phone with the Merriam-Webster definition, show it to Uncle Fred, and ask, “is this what you’re against?”
Fred may say something about libs and critical race theory. Once again, let’s define terms. Critical race theory is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. They’re not teaching it in K-12, where there are no social and civil-rights scholars.
Individuals who receive their ongoing education by way of Fox News tend to believe that public schools are indoctrination centers designed to turn children into gay radical leftists. I’m enough of a dreamer to believe still that the purpose of school is some level of education that includes history. Of course, teachers have opinions, as do parents, and one of the best things we can teach our kids is discernment.
I want to see a school that teaches children how to think. For themselves.
The eminent funk meister George Clinton once said, “Think! It ain’t illegal yet!” Of course, that was before thinking became illegal in Florida and parts of Arizona. But I digress.